Tuesday, 28 January 2014

The scientific name dictionary

Scientific names are a horrible combination of mostly, but not exclusively, Greek words and bits of words which have been Latinised based on religion-influenced current practice of the 18th century and then pronounced in English - in the UK at least. We should maybe be thankful that at least it's not Swedish. The binomial/quadronomial system and the species concept also have hints of the quaint notion that all species arrived fully-formed and immutable from the hand of God and are static, but that's a whole other topic.

Still, it kind of works, especially in theory. In practice for one "common" name you might have an apparently endless succession of scientific names as taxonomy is shuffled around, so some of the alleged benefits are gobbled up over time. Still, it is how we do things. No two people pronounce everything the same but at least when you read it you should be able to make some kind of sense of it. This list will grow as I grapple with trying to make the obscure obvious, especially to myself. Sometimes understanding the scientific name is very helpful with identification.

Note - endings can be variable as they are in most languages, notably Greek and Latin. Declension of classic languages is beyond the scope of this dictionary :)